Saturday, May 18, 2013

Dr. Jacob Thacker is on probation for abusing Xanax and is
working in public relations for the dean at South Carolina State Medical
College until he is deemed ready to return to practicing medicine. When renovations begin on campus, a burial
ground of bones estimated to be a century old are uncovered taking Jacob and
his colleagues on a journey into a darker part of the colleges history and
taking Jacob on a journey of self-discovery that will help shape his
future. A founder of the school, Dr.
Frederick Augustus Johnston purchased a slave, Nemo, who was especially skilled
with a knife. Nemo was an unofficial
member of the faculty and a resurrenctionist, who was responsible for finding
bodies on which the students could practice.
The further Jacob delves into Nemo’s story, the more he realizes that he
must make decisions that will not be popular with the school, possibly costing
the school funding and costing Jacob, perhaps his livelihood. Told in alternating chapters between Jacob’s
present day story and Nemo’s story in nineteenth-century South Carolina,
Matthew Guinn depicts two memorable characters with a subtle narrative and
strong sense of place. Readers watch as
Jacob is transformed from a self-absorbed young man into someone with a
curiosity about his past & that of his school’s and into someone willing to
stand up for what he knows is right. This
is a beautifully and subtly written debut
novel.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Geniver Loxley has been unable to get over the death of her
daughter Beth at her birth eight years ago.
Once an author with a promising future, Gen has begun teaching writing
classes at a local college, though her heart is not in it; her husband Art has
been urging Beth to try fertility treatments that will enable them to have
another child, but Gen can’t bear the thought of losing another child. A stranger arrives on her doorstep one day
telling Gen that she is the sister of the nurse who was in the delivery room
the day Beth was born and that Beth did not die, but was stolen from Gen, is
still alive and that Art was in on the crime.
Gen cannot believe that Art would be involved in such a thing, but as
she begins to look into the veracity of the woman’s claims, she realizes that
her sister, now dead, may have been telling the truth. Gen tracks down the people who were in the
delivery room that day and realizes that Lucy’s sister was telling the truth
and that her Beth may in fact still be alive.
Filled with twists and turns and a woman on the edge, Close My Eyes begins with a parent’s
worst nightmare and ends with a shocking conclusion few will see coming.

Engrossing and disturbing, The Wicked Girls explores the lives of two women convicted of
murder as eleven-year-olds who appear to have gotten away from the events of
their childhood until the day the two meet again as a serial-killer stalks
young women in a seaside town. Bel and
Jade meet for the first time when they are eleven but become tied together
forever when they murder, and attempt to cover it up, the young sister of a
friend of one of their older brothers.
Convicted, but separated during their time they served at their
sentences, new identities were created for the notorious pre-teens and they
have tried to put their pasts behind them: Jade has become Kristy, a newspaper
reporter who has a loving husband and two children; Bel is now Amber, a
night-shift cleaning supervisor at an amusement park with an abusive common-law
husband and little hope for her future.
Bel stumbles upon a dead woman in the house of horrors and Kristy comes
to report on the serial murders, putting the two on a collision course that
will force them to remember the past and creates circumstances that will make
their futures as uncertain as they once were.
The original crime is revealed slowly as flashbacks, leading up to the
inevitable meeting of these two women who must resolve their past issues if
they hope to move on with the future.
While tracking down a serial killer makes this book part mystery, the
moodiness of the narrative and the focus on the two women and how their past
and choices since have affected their lives takes the book, a hit in the UK into the
realm of psychological suspense.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Barbieri, known for her cozier novels featuring St. Thomas
College professor Alison Bergeron, has written a very different, darker novel, featuring Maeve
Conlon, a very tired divorced mother of two who owns a bakery and who keeps secrets
from her past close and will stop at nothing to protect those she loves. Even being from a close Irish family, Maeve
can’t shed any tears when her cousin Sean is found murdered. Her father Jack, who is showing signs of
dementia, is also not saddened when he hears of the death of his nephew, and
what’s more, he cannot provide an alibi for himself for the night of Sean’s
death. As Maeve slowly confronts the
demons of her past, she is relentless in the defense of her father, but as she
delves deeper into Sean’s murder she has to face things she is not ready to
face, leading to the biggest surprise of all.
While it’s never clear why the police focus on Jack as the murder
suspect, it doesn’t detract from the suspense and drama as Maeve works to clear
her father’s name and hold what is left of her family together while all the
while, keeping her sanity; trying to find peace of mind and a truth she can
live with when she learns the truth she has been living
with all these years was a lie which set into motion events that can never be
undone.

Fina Ludlow is the youngest and only daughter, in a family
of high-powered Boston attorneys. After
flunking out of law school, Fina got her PIs license and finds she enjoys that
part of the law business much more than litigation; she has got the looks to
charm men from low level thugs to high level cops but has the nerve, and good
shot, to hold her own in any situation. Fina’s
sister-in-law Melanie doesn’t come home one night and Rand asks Fina to find
where his wife went, thinking she is sulking at a spa or over some designer
shopping. When Melanie turns up no
traces of the woman, and Melanie’s best friend Risa also hasn’t heard from her
in days, Fina becomes concerned: first for Melanie’s safety, and secondly that
Rand has done something to his wife. Using
some of her less than upstanding contacts, Fina starts asking questions as to
the whereabouts of her sister-in-law and quickly finds herself on the receiving
end of a beating and accident on the Mass Pike designed to kill. The closer Fina looks, the more she realizes
that every family has secrets, but will her family stop at nothing to keep them
hidden? Even hurting Fina? Edgy with a
feminine side, Fina is a welcomed addition to the growing ranks of female
PIs. The complicated plot will keep
readers guessing as they untangle the strands that have become the life of Rand
Ludlow, and by association, his sister’s life as well. The narrative is well-paced and doesn’t stop
until the last page.

Build a Better World

The 11th Annual Adult Summer Reading Club has come to a close.

The club's 157 members have read a total of 1,515 books!

Thank you, all, for your enthusiastic participation.

Quote to Inspire

"Fiction, imaginative work that is, is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners."~Virginia Woolf

11th Annual

To see a larger image of this graph, look through the member reviews. It will usually be posted on Friday afternoons.

How to Use this Blog:

To post a review for a book, please submit it via the "Finished a Book" link from the club's webpage: http://www.hclibrary.us/asrc.htm.

Because all posts & comments must be approved by the library, and because the librarians sometimes take summer vacations too, there will be a delay before you see your submission on the blog. Please be patient; your review will appear.